Coconut Orange Sugar Cookies

Like most of the world right now, I am at home. This poses some problems for a library, as many of the services we offer are face-to-face. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have lots and lots of electronic resources, so part of what we’re working on is making sure that folks can connect with the resources that we offer electronically. One idea was to find a cookbook in our e-resource collection and make a recipe. I love a challenge, so I went to find a recipe right away.

Pardon me for a minute, but I am going to go all librarian on you. I did some searching, and if you search for “cookbook” as a keyword, you find all sorts of non-cooking items. No, I don’t want a book on Java or HTML. How annoying! I switched up my search and searched for “cookbook” as a LC subject heading and I got much better results. I bake cookies, so that guided my search. I ended up finding a recipe in our book from the EBSCOhost Community College Collection: The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes.

I also needed to find a recipe that I had the ingredients on hand, and this recipe calls for simple ingredients. The only change I made was using orange juice (3 tablespoons) instead of orange juice concentrate (2 tablespoons) and milk (1 tablespoon). Who has orange juice concentrate on hand? In my case, the orange was perhaps slightly less pronounced, but you can still taste and smell orange. I used sanding sugar on the top since I had that, but you could also use traditional sugar. These cookies look a bit plain, but they are really flavorful!

Coconut Orange Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup vegan butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 tablespoons orange juice

1 teaspoon vanilla

2-1/2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

Sanding sugar

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and eggs on medium until light. Add the orange juice, and vanilla and mix on medium to combine. Stop the mixer and add the flour, baking soda, and salt and stir on low until almost combined. Add the coconut and stir on low until incorporated. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls. Spray the bottom of a drinking glass with nonstick cooking spray and dip in sanding sugar. Flatten the cookies with the bottom of the drinking glass, until about 1/3” thick.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until slightly browned along the bottom edges. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from The Grit Cookbook: World-Wise, Down-Home Recipes by Jessica Greene and Ted Hafer